CoD Modern Warfare: Curse of Khandor Hideout (Author's Copy)

It was Saturday and my friend and I should be playing Xbox. We had just done the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare update and we were both excited to play the new map: Khandor Hideout.

"Let's make a custom game and play against bots." I suggested, to save us having to wait for the map to appear in rotation.

"OK." My friends said

We created a lobby and had a great time on this new map when the update was finally downloaded. We were in a team and enthusiastically pulled bots left and right. Even though the bots were set to hard mode, we successfully defeated them easily, and I was just about to kill my latest killstreak and advanced UAV. I ran into the warehouse in the room with the big machine inside, and as I checked the doors, something shot me in the face. I died and lost my streak of murder.

"What?!" I cried with rage.

"What happened?" My friends asked.

"Someone killed me, where were they?" I cursed

"Look at the killcam." My friends kindly suggested.

I saw the kill camera and saw that a robot had shot me with an M4 assault rifle. The weird thing was where the robot had been when it killed me. He had been standing at a small door on the side of the room that he hadn't even noticed before. It was on the left side of the room.

"Wow, I didn't even notice that door before." I laughed. So they didn't freeze something a little strange. It was the name on the bot's killcame, it was one I didn't recognize. It said "TheCursed1". That was very strange, since I didn't even know that could happen, since bots generally only have normal human names like real life. I quickly checked the bookmark, but didn't see "TheCursed1" anywhere. Wow, that's weird, I thought. However, I thought it must be a killcam error related to a new map, and that one of the other bots must have killed me.

We continued to play and have fun, and shortly thereafter we reached the score limit by kicking the bot's asses. My friends got disconnected, but I wanted to explore the new map a bit more, so I created a private match just with myself and without bots or enemies. I loaded myself onto the map and had fun running and locating all the places where I could camp and look quickly.

I ran into the warehouse, and was startled to die again. I was shot from the same place as before.

"What the hell?" I screamed. I saw the killer camera in shock. It was TheCursed1 again that had killed me ... but there weren't even bots supposed to be in combat.

I quickly returned to the door where I had been killed. It was empty. I tried to enter the door but found myself blocked by an invisible wall. As much as I tried to run to the door, I couldn't get through. There was nothing visible to block me, and I could see a little towards the corridor beyond. He looked like an ordinary runner. I quickly went out to the front of the building, there were a pair of blue doors that looked like where the corridor would emerge. They were visibly the kind of doors you should be able to interact with; In this game, the doors you couldn't interact with looked different. But when I ran to the doors, I didn't get a notice and couldn't open the doors at all. Even when I ran to them, they didn't open like a door that can be interacted.

"Wow, this is a strange mistake!" I though. I ran back to the warehouse to look at the corridor again from the other side. I could see inside. Just when I was standing there, I heard something strange. It was a weapon clicking like it was being reloaded. He could hear small movements coming from inside the corridor, as if there was another player there.

Thinking quickly, I threw my tactical grenade into the corridor. It was an instant grenade. That was able to break through the invisible wall, and it crashed down the hallway and exploded, providing a view of the section of the corridor that was out of sight through the wall. Sure enough, there was another soldier down there. Its outline glowed orange in the snapshot of the grenade. But there were not supposed to be other players in the lobby, and how did he get into this corridor that was impossible to access?

Frustrated, I threw a fragmentation grenade down the hall. It exploded, and I did indeed get an impact marker and XP signal that it was dead. In the kill feed, it emerged that he had killed TheCursed1. I laughed in relief, thinking that I had just mistakenly gotten a strange robot, and that it was clearly not a hacker. Just then, another message appeared on my screen. In-game, new camo or weapon unlocks appear on screen during match when accomplished, and this was very similar, but instead said "New Map Unlock", and above it showed an image of Khandor Hideout at night with a subtitle that says Khandor Hideout (Night). There were many night modes from other maps, but none for Khandor Hideout that I knew of. It must have been a secret challenge that he had accomplished by killing that hidden player!

I quickly googled to see if anyone else had found this Easter egg yet. There were a lot of people talking about the mysterious door with the invisible wall and the strange corridor beyond, but nobody had tried what it had. I was so excited to be the first!

I left the lobby and started a new lobby, and indeed when I went through the list of maps, I was able to select "Khandor Hideout (Night)".

"Wow great!" I thought and waited for the map to load. We entered the map in the truck and went out onto the main street. It was dark, even darker than most night maps as there weren't even any street lights on, just a few construction lights and my night vision goggles. I ran down the main street, looking at the new map. I was very excited to be possibly the first person to play. Then I saw something that made my blood run cold and all my excitement fade. The blue doors on the outside of the warehouse were slightly open. I approached them. It was impossible to see what was beyond them, with only darkness appearing in my night vision goggles. But this time, a message appeared to open the door. With some apprehension, I pressed it and the door opened. Between. The interior hallway was almost completely black, even in the night vision goggles.

Suddenly, I heard a beep, like in night infection mode, and the icon at the bottom of the screen blinked red to indicate that I had run out of batteries in my night vision goggles. Although he knew it was just a game, he was still screaming with instinctive dismay. The night vision goggles went off, and I turned to see the street light disappear when the door slammed shut behind me.

It was completely black. The only thing on the screen were the HUD elements. I couldn't even tell which way I was looking. I didn't move for a second, sitting quietly. My heart skipped a beat when I heard it, footsteps running towards me.

Instinctively I pressed down on the left bumper, and my player tossed the Molotov cocktail I had equipped. It crashed to the ground, and for a fraction of a second I saw something in the light of the flames. It was a man, or something like that. It didn't look like any model in the game: it was out of place, raw, like it was a model from a much older game. The sharp polygons made it look almost like something from a PS1 game. I only saw it for a few frames, before it hit my player, and the screen went red with a horrible cracking sound. I was dead.

The killcam was completely black, but I could hear that things were weird and fast. I pressed X to reappear, but the game froze. After ten seconds, I went back to the title screen and saw a message:

“Your data is corrupt and was not downloaded correctly. You must reset your ranks and unlocks to continue. "

I cursed because I had a lot of gold camo, and indeed when I pressed OK, my character had completely rebooted. When I checked the list on the map, Khandor's hideout was gone. I threw the controller down frustrated, and turned off the xbox.

Frustrated, I went online to see if anyone else had experienced the strange Easter egg. I searched for everything I could do with Khandor's hideout and the details behind the creepy corridor. There were very few details about the odd location, let alone to do with someone finding another player there, or why the runner could have stayed that way.

I was almost ready to give up when I found a blog post from the official Infinity Ward site. It was before the release of the games, and while it was before Khandor's hideout had been released, it must have still been in development. It was a research trip that level designers had taken to Pakistan to help them capture the feel of places in the Middle East. There were many photos. One of them was from a street, and I recognized him instantly. Although it was slightly different in real life, it was clearly the warehouse of Khandor's hideout. I could even see the blue doors.

The blog post gave the name of the Pakistani street, and I put it on Google Street View. Sure enough, I found myself exploring Khandor's true hideout. The doors were there. I was wondering what had made developers choose this particular street as it looked like almost any other street in the Middle East. I Googled the street name, there was only one result.

It was a news article from last year, in Pakistani language. I put it through the Google translator and found out that it was a murder. Late at night, a patrolled soldier had been lured to a warehouse to investigate shooting and had his neck broken. Khandor's hideout warehouse. Through those same blue doors he had practically entered through. The crime had been linked to a secret dark sect that was violent in the area and that other Muslims considered cursed.

I don't know what the map linked to that horrible murder, whether it was some kind of twisted and entertaining reference to the developers' secret real-life story of Khandor's hideout, or if it was something else. I know that Infinity Ward quickly addressed the issue. The first patch placed large boxes on the door, making it impossible to see the corridor, or impossible for something to go off. A long time later, in the last patch, they have stopped the problem in that inaccessible corridor. The doors now open like any other in the game, and the corridor leads to nowhere other than that door within the warehouse, and is fully accessible. But as much as I search for Khandor Hideout videos before the patch, I still haven't been able to find anyone who was there at night.